


Anaphora

by moritooru



Series: with your lungs not yet rotting [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Arthur Morgan Lives, Bounty Hunting, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Found Family, Gun fights, I’m no fuckin Dutch apologist and I fucking loathe Micah Bell what do you thinks gonna happen, M/M, Murder, Romance, Set during the Epilogue, Trans Male Character, can be read as a one shot but I have another chapter im workin on, canon character death, heres your spoiler it’s John and Arthur, revenge missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 16:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19444924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moritooru/pseuds/moritooru
Summary: John manages to hogtie Javier just outside California.





	Anaphora

John manages to hogtie Javier just outside California, dragging him back to his horse after snatching his knife ~~the one John had gifted him, one quiet night after he’d joined him on watch~~ and overly decorated revolver from his gun belt. Javier struggles. Yells and screams and begs with John. Calls him names; traitor, pussy, something in Spanish John can’t quite understand but feels ain’t pretty. John rides on. It’s a 3 day trip back to the ranch anyway. 

They camp out, when they get half way through the next state over. Javier stays tied.

“Where are we going?” He asks John

“Home,” John says

It takes another day longer than John would have liked, because he had to tackle and restrain Javier another two times after he’d worn his bonds down and broke them. He prays he doesn’t do it again; John’s running out of rope. 

They reach John’s ranch, still not yet completed, John helps Javier down off Rachel, leads him over to where Uncle laid passed out against a tree, kicks him awake

“Found a Stray,” he says once Uncle wakes

“More like _hunted_ a stray you mean.” Javier snaps back with that grin that never quite reached his eyes. 

Charles glances at Javier warily, eyes shining with a warmth that was always given to him and a strange sort of caution, as if Javier would knife them all in the backs and run back to California if given the chance. I would, he thinks, knowing that he would not. 

Charles joins him for a drink, untying the rope that bound him to Uncle’s tree. Hands him a flask of whiskey and sits beside him. 

“Why’d you run?” He asks

“Don’t wanna be here,” Javier replies and in some ways it’s true, but in most it is not. 

Miss Sadie Adler comes back from up North, she says, on a fine Tuesday afternoon, the day after a storm had hit, and left the air humid and wet, unusually so for this far west. 

John eyes her with love, with concern and a possible hint of fear. He toes around her like he thinks she’ll run just like Javier did, and holds her tight when she leans in for a hug. Whispers something about Abigail in her ear and watches her tilt her head down and smile, softest thing about her these days, that smile she gives to mentions of Abigail and Jack, John tells him. 

Sadie holds his hand, when she sleeps, curled against him on the floor of the main room in ~~his, Abigail’s~~ their ranch, not yet furnished aside from several bed rolls pushed together in the night to form a pile of padding. Charles watches them with love, with warmth, the same warmth he shares with Javier. Same warmth he shared with Jack and Abigail, Tilly and Mary Beth, Kieran once, too. The way he looks at John is the same way he looked at the girls, but the way he glances at Sadie reminds him of seeing him smiling, with Arthur, after a hunting trip, even if they didn’t bring in more than a gator, or small game at best. 

Charles stays awake with Javier in the night on watch, talks softly of John, of Arthur, of Sadie and Abigail, and twice, of Dutch.

He asks first, what it is that drew Javier to Dutch. Javier tells him it was survival. Charles tells him it was sympathy and warmth he wanted, that he could’ve survived on his own. It’s true. But Javier would rather burn his wrists raw trying to run for the hills again than admit it to anything or anyone.

The second time is a few weeks later. They managed to finish raising the barn and added exactly one (1) bed to the house. It sat on the floor in the master bedroom, lacking a frame. John had come back that day, with a few more bruises, a few more scrapes, Sadie trailing behind him and grinning like she won the damn race. She gives Charles a kiss on the cheek, to which he laughs and pulls her in to kiss her back. She smiles at Javier after, a real genuine Sadie Adler smile, one he hadn’t seen for a good damn few years. 

Charles takes him to the barn, to help him carry in bales of hay. He asks more of Dutch then. His first question is simple, spoken after an offhand comment about. Perhaps loyalty, or family, but the question is loaded and the answer sits heavy on Javier’s tongue. 

“Why didn’t you leave too, like the Reverend and Tilly?”

The question is loaded, yes, like the guns those fucking sugar plantation fucks pointed at his face as they dragged him through the mud. Dutch left John and Arthur. But he left Javier too. In Guarma, and he’d told them to go and it seemed logical. But, sitting in a cage waiting, he wished, on several occasions that they had all been captured, humiliated and treated the way Javier had been. At least, together. And perhaps seeing that Micah Bell get his face pushed into the thick mud would be damn worth it. 

“He was all I had,” Javier answers. And in some ways it’s true, but in most is isn’t. 

Dutch Van Der Linde was not all Javier had.

Javier had plenty. Javier had Tilly Jackson, had Mary-Beth Gaskill and Karen Jones. And even further back, Jenny Kirk. Javier had Sean and Lenny, on some occasions had one Josiah Trelawny, and even poor Kieran Duffy for awhile, odd as he was. And dear Arthur Morgan. 

Javier ~~had~~ has John. He has Sadie Adler and Charles Smith, and feels the love they share between them burn brighter than the fire he sat and played for every damn night for near 5 years. He will have, soon, Abigail and Jack. If what John tells him is true and their split is only “temporary in nature”. 

Dutch was not all he had. Dutch was a singular piece of their family, important as he was. But he was just a person. One who left his sons to rot in prisons or get stabbed by military men. Left one and presumed him dead without even trying to find him. He gave Javier a home, fed and clothed him, gave him a place to sleep protected. Took care and protected many of them with something akin to being paternal. But he was no father. No father would leave them all like that. No father would put them all at risk as he did. 

Abigail arrives, in a manner that mirrors Sadie’s, on a hot and muggy Tuesday afternoon. 

She runs towards John, let’s him wrap his arms around her waist and spin her around. Javier watches Sadie Adler smile, bright behind her gloved hands. Then, Abigail spots him, and her smile drops and her eyes widen like she’s seen the Holy Ghost. Abigails arms fall from John’s neck. He looks...pained, perhaps? Uneasy. Concerned. 

She takes off towards him, throws her arms around _him_ this time and buries her face into the crook of his neck. 

“Oh, Javier,” she breathes. So he places his arms around her, and squeezes tight. And it feels, for a moment, like home once more.


End file.
